Lead Quietly

Choose Leadership to Stay Relevant

2013-08-10T07:00:00.002-05:00

Leadership is a choice more than a title. Today, I am reminded that there is a compelling new reason for choosing leadership, “Staying relevant in our new age of work.”

Background

I have written about leadership choice several times in the past. For example, in Leading from Below, I cite a Wall Street Journal article that makes five recommendations about your leadership choices. The most important recommendation is:

Make a conscious decision to lead and move beyond your current role. Make the decision on your own. Take the risk and you'll thrive in your job and get that next promotion.

Choose Leadership to Stay Relevant

Today I curated a Fast Company article entitled The Four Things People Can Still Do Better Than Computers for my Leaderly and Listable Scoop.It. The Fast Company article describes the changing labor market and those skills that will be valued in our changing world.

My summary and simple recommendations after reading the article and underlying research paper:

Computers are not good at being human.
Computers are not good at leadership.
Choose leadership to stay relevant.

I found the Fast Company article interesting and would recommend reading it. We need to stay relevant.

Thanks for reading. Choose leadership, quiet leadership.
Don

Inspired by Lists

2013-07-27T06:02:00.000-05:00

I’m inspired by lists.

What kind of lists?

All kinds. My favorites include:
To-do lists, bucket lists, blog rolls, checklists, best seller lists, grocery lists, most emailed lists, Forbes richest people lists, reference lists, Fortune 100 Lists, dream list, David Letterman Top Ten Lists and more.

I often get leadership inspiration and insight from a good list. To me, a list from a great thinker like Tom Peters, Seth Godin, Michael Hyatt, Gretchen Rubin will teach, coach, and inspire. And best of all, it may only require a short amount of time to find that one nugget that makes a difference.

Introducing Leaderly & Listable

For the past few weeks, I have been curating and sharing leadership lists in an effort that I have titled, Leaderly & Listable. You can access these lists on this blog on the Leaderly & Listable page or directly on the Leaderly & Listable Scoop.It site.

Finally, if you find a good list that you think should be included in this effort, Tweet a link using the hash tag #LdrLst (think Leader List with no vowels). I can include the list in this effort.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.

Don

Tom Peter's Leaderly List

2013-06-01T21:11:00.003-05:00

I am a fan of Tom Peters. Last week, Tom tweeted that he had posted a leadership self-assessment on his web site. I took a look and given my fondness for leaderly lists, I retweeted the following:

A mini-MBA in leadership: @tom_peters: Tom's posted a leadership self-assessment at http://t.co/E85iX6cp46.
— Don Frederiksen (@donfred) May 31, 2013

If you are looking for a quick checklist for leaderly actions, the summary at the bottom of the post provides that mini-MBA in leadership.

In your self assessment, ask yourself, am I a(n) fill in the blank from the Peter's list.__

"Aggressive listener."
Expert at questioning.
Meetings as leadership opportunity #1.
Creating a "civil society."
Expert at "helping."
Expert at holding productive conversations.
Fanatic about clear communications.
Fanatic about training.
Master of appreciation/acknowledgement.
Effective at apology.
Creating a culture of automatic helpfulness by all to all.
Presentation excellence.
Conscious master of body language.
Master of hiring.
Master of evaluating people.
Time manager par excellence.
Avid practitioner of MBWA/Managing By Wandering Around.
Avid student of the process of influencing others per se.
Student of decision making and devastating impact of irrational aspects thereof.
Brilliantly schooled student of negotiation.
Creating a no-nonsense execution culture.
Meticulous about employee development/100% of staff.
Student of the power of "d"iversity (all flavors of difference).
Aggressive in pursuing gender balance.
Making team-building excellence everyone's daily priority.
Understanding value of matchless 1st-line management.
Instilling "business sense" in one and all.

The list is a wealth of great reminders. The entire post is indeed a mini-MBA in leadership.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly

Don

You Must Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go

2013-04-14T07:16:00.001-05:00

My Lesson at Level 4 Leadership

I was impacted recently when one of my employees left my team to pursue opportunities outside of my company. That event and a review of my own career opportunities motivated me to study the role of growth and employee development in leadership. I had to face the reality that the team member left my team because I had failed to fully understand and act on the development needs of the departing team member. Leaders need to be people developers. You must help them grow or watch them go.
The imperative this leadership role was validated for me with a review of the John Maxwell book, The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential. Maxwell’s levels provide a framework to measure and grow your leadership abilities.
In this framework, all leaders start at the bottom (Level 1) and grow to higher levels of influence. Levels 2 – 4 represent a hierarchy of skills that you earn as a result of your relationships, problem solving and development. Few leaders reach the pinnacle (Level 5). Each level builds on the previous level and you progress to the next level after mastering and maintaining the previous level.

Maxwell’s 5 Levels of Leadership

The Maxwell book provide great insight but you can also get a sample of the framework directly from Maxwell from the YouTube embedded below.

The Maxwell framework helped me pinpoint that I had personal development of my own in order to occupy a Level 4 position.

Level 4 Best Behaviors

Here is a quick list of the best behaviors and guidelines of Level 4 People Development leadership.
1. Find the Best People Possible – A good team starts with good people with the right chemistry, character, capacity, and contribution. Maxwell quoted coach Lou Holtz who said, “I’ve had good players and I’ve had bad players. I’m a better coach with good players.”
2. Positioning – Placing the Right People in the Right Position. A leader must understand the strengths and weaknesses of their team and put people in a position to succeed. I have previously written about this as the Tom Kelly approach in Lead like a Teacher - Find the Right Role.
3. Modeling – Showing Other How to Lead. It is simple. Model what you want to see in others.
4. Equipping – Helping Other Do Their Jobs Well. Leadership is not just delegation. It is delegation along with support, coaching, and mentoring.
5. Developing – Teaching Them to Do Life Well. Good life skills help a person create a a foundation for success.
6. Empowering – Enabling People to Succeed. As Maxwell write, “you need to trust them, believe in them, and hold them accountable.
7. Measuring – Evaluating Those Whom you Develop to Maximize their Efforts. This is a simple behavior that proposes that you evaluate and keep score in order to learn and grow.
I discovered many new leadership insight in the Maxwell book. I would recommend quiet leaders explore this insight.
Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly as people developers.
Don

Lincoln – Complex, Quiet Story Teller

2012-11-22T12:13:00.001-06:00

I had the pleasure of seeing the movie Lincoln this past week and came away appreciating the performance and tone of the movie.
I think there is a tendency to view Lincoln as the ultimate hero. Maybe it is a notion set by our history text books or even older movies. I’m not saying that he isn’t heroic. I’m really suggesting that his persona is too complex to be conveyed in a single label like “hero.” I think that the movie was true to this complexity.
I have written about Lincoln previously where I also cited the exploration of Lincoln in the book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. This book provides the basis for the period depicted in the movie. In my previous post I wrote about Lincoln and his quiet leadership where I noted

his ability to bring his political rivals into his cabinet and sooth their egos, turn these rivals into allies, and gain their respect and loyalty through his political skill and insight into human behavior. It is this skill that the quiet leader in us emulates and the basis for nominating Lincoln as a quiet leader.

The movie reinforced two perceptions about Lincoln that I held after this earlier citation.

Lincoln was comfortable with silence. He didn’t need to fill every second with conversation.
Lincoln was a consummate story-teller and frequently use a good yarn whenever the situation called for insight, inspiration, or leadership.

I left the movie still comfortable with Lincoln’s nomination to my Quiet Leadership Hall of Fame.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

The Story Behind Storytelling

2012-09-20T21:05:00.001-05:00

I was intrigued by storytelling this past week. The idea started when I had conversations with two people who could captivate you with their storytelling.
The first was a colleague who seemed to be able to talk about family and background as a story with rich context but soft words. Those soft words weaved stories about parents, horses, childhood experiences, and even children's teachers. I was intrigued by the impact of those soft words.
The second was a semi-retired (her words) professor who talked about life experiences in a manner that seemed so distant from the Tweet/text message driven social communication that occurs today. I could have listened for hours to stories about education and family. She used very rich words and assembled those words into very captivating stories.
Both instances represented styles that seemed so different from the sound bite bursts that deluge us every day.
As a follow-up to those conversations, I started to stumble upon blog posts and manifestos on the power of storytelling. Here are to highlights:
I came upon a ChangeThis manifesto by author Jonah Sachs who started that manifesto by proposing, “…if you want to be heard, you’d better learn to tell better stories.” In his manifesto, he provides ten storytelling strategies:

Know What a Story is
Figure Out What You Stand For
Declare Your moral
Now prove it
Stop trying to Be the Hero
Show the Broken World
Make Sure there’s action
Reveal the moral
Break the mold
Stay On ground level

You will want to spend a few minutes reviewing this manifesto to add this valuable insight to story telling.

Link to Leadership

So an obvious question on the Lead Quietly blog is “What does story telling have to do with leadership?” For this question the Forbes.com blog of Dan Schawbel provides insight. How to Use Storytelling as a Leadership Tool also directed me to the work of Paul Smith who wrote the book, Lead with a Story: A Guide to Crafting Business Narratives That Captivate, Convince, and Inspire. Schawbel’s inteview with Paul Smith provided the following storytelling insights:

Start with the context.
Use metaphors and analogies.
Appeal to emotion.
Keep it tangible and concrete.
Include a surprise.
Use a narrative style appropriate for business.
Move beyond telling your audience a story to creating a scene or event for them to participate in.

I would recommend going to Schawbel's blog to gain additional insight to the list.

At the end of the week, the conversations and the reading had me thinking about my storytelling capabilities. I hope you are inspired similarly.
Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

Leadership Styles are Like Golf Clubs

2012-05-19T07:23:00.000-05:00

I recognize that different leadership styles are required for different situations. No one style is adequate for different people, groups or situations. On the golf course, you pull a different club from your golf bag depending on your lie and distance needed, an effective leader should have a set of leadership styles in his leadership bag to most effectively lead in different situations. A recent review of some work by author Daniel Goleman validated my thinking.
Daniel Goleman is best known for his books on Emotional Intelligence. His best selling work defined a set of skills and competencies that defines how people manage feelings, interact, and communicate on their way to success.
In his book Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence, Goleman cites the leadership research of the consulting firm Hay/McBer that identified six distinct styles employed by leaders. The best leaders do no rely on a single leadership style but use multiple styles and are able to move between them seamlessly and in different measure depending on the situation and people.
He conveniently summarizes the six leadership styles and their application in a chart that I have reconstructed below.

Leadership Style	The leader’s approach	In a phrase	Best used when…	Impact on Climate
Coercive	Demands immediate compliance	"Do what I tell you."	In a crisis to kick start a turnaround	Negative
Authoritative	Mobilizes people toward a vision	"Come with me."	When changes require a new vision, or when a clear direction is needed	Most strongly positive
Affiliative	Creates harmony and builds emotional bonds	"People come first."	To heal rifts in a team or to motivate people during stressful circumstances	Positive
Democratic	Forges consensus through participation	“What do you think?”	To build buy in or consensus or to get input from valuable employees	Positive
Pacesetting	Sets high standards for performance	“Do as I do, now.”	To get quick results from a highly motivated and competent team	Negative
Coaching	Develops people for the future	“Try this.”	To help an employee improve performance or develop long-term strengths	Positive

You can access Goleman’s full description of the styles in the book, on in the original Harvard Business Review article Leadership that Get Results. Please remember that you can access HBR articles from your local library’s online database.

The Lead Quietly Takeaway

My takeaway from the article is that just like I have clubs in my golf bag that I avoid because I need more practice, there are leadership styles that require honing on my part to become the Phil Mickelson of the Leadership Tour. Are you able to move and adjust your style as needed?
Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
don

Are you agreeable? I’m sorry to tell you bad news….

2011-12-05T04:22:00.001-06:00

As quiet leaders, we pride ourselves in personal qualities like trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, and tender-mindedness. These qualities are among the elements that researchers say make you agreeable. I have to say that I personally like the idea of being agreeable.

Well the bad news is that according to research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, your agreeableness is going to cost you. Agreeableness is a handicap when it come to compensation and getting ahead.

I actually got a sick feeling when I read this on the Lifehacker site. I was standing in a slow line during some weekend shopping and immediately sent the following Tweet response:

A full read of the Lifehacker article will direct you to a Wired article entitled, Do Nice Guys Finish Last? which in provides a link to the research article that was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Beth A. Livingston of Cornell, Timothy A. Judge of Notre Dame, and Charlice Hurst of the University of Western Ontario. You can access the research document hosted on the Notre Dame website.

Digging deeper, here is one research summary from the Harvard researchers:

Overall, across the first three studies, men who are one standard deviation below the mean on agreeableness earn an average of 18.31 percent ($9,772) more than men one standard deviation above the mean on agreeableness.

I don’t know what it means to be one standard deviation below the mean on agreeableness, but I was confident that there had to be a better way.

There are contrary findings and opinions on this subject. I cited previously in my post Nice pays, winners don't punish the work of authors Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval as found in their book, The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World With Kindness,

Nice is not naive. Nice does not mean smiling blandly while others walk all over you. Nice does not mean being a doormat. In fact, we would argue that nice is the toughest four-letter word you’ll ever hear. It means moving forward with the clear-eyed confidence that comes from knowing that being very nice and placing other people’s needs on the same level as your own will get you everything you want.

My recommendation for both myself and other quiet leaders: Stay the Course. It will take us a bit longer but in the long run being surrounded by people where the relationship is based on trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, and tender-mindedness has its own rewards.

Thanks for reading. Lead Quietly. Stay the course.

don

Adopt a Green Mentality

2011-10-29T08:22:00.001-05:00

I’ve written about the importance of learning in leadership often. Those writings included:

The Learning Zone – Everyday Action for Learning

Learning: Make it Informal

Fixed or Growth, What’s in your mindset?

It’s All About Learning – Part Deux

Learning is an important element of leadership. I’m not writing today to restate that fact.

However, I find it interesting when there is a new twist to an existing idea and that is the notion behind my urging to “Adopt a Green Mentality.”

The idea came from Shawn Murphy (Twitter: @Shawmu), the founder of Achieved Strategies when he wrote, 12 Most Necessary Shifts in Leadership Thinking for Today.

I love a good list of insight and definitions and the tenth item on Shawn’s great list was my favorite. It immediately resonated with me. Here are Shawn’s words.

10. Adopt a “Green Mentality”
A colleague once said about professional development: “If you’re ripe you’re rotting; if you’re green you’re growing.” Professional development never ends. A green mentality keeps your mind sharp and your skills fresh.

My call today is for leaders to adopt a green mentality. Join me and make it part of your everyday mission.

Thanks for reading. Lead quietly and think green, be growing.

don

Newly Etched in Stone - Be Humble

2011-09-24T08:43:00.003-05:00

I’m changing my Quiet Leader commandments. Fortunately these commandments are not hosted on stone tablets but I do consider these principles seriously. They go to the core of who I try to be.

The new commandment is “Be humble.”

Recently, I encountered the Humility Imperative. I started reading the submissions of some of my favorite people on the blogosphere. I not only discovered the site, I was consumed by it.

Here are two examples from the site that influenced me to change the commandments.

“my boss and other officials took all the credit”

The post title caught my attention in the context of a recent company event. The post by M.D. Haddad resonated with me. As leaders we need to remember to give credit where credit is due. We have to dig deep to ensure that everyone gets credit. Just like the credits at the end of the movie that recognize the best boy, gaffer, key grip, caterer, and the administrative assistant.

At a quarterly global town hall meeting at my work this week, a regional executive was announcing a global initiative that members of my team worked on. The phrase “worked on” does no justice to the effort. Because the project was managed from our Asia Pacific office, the project effort included evening and early morning conference calls. An aggressive timeline also required my team members put in long hours, several times late into the evening and early morning so that data fixes would be ready for the Asia Pacific development team. My team did the work of the best boys, gaffers, and key grips. They helped make it happen.

However, in the global town hall meeting, no one below a director level was recognized for their effort. There were pictures, accolades, stand up introductions and more. But in the end, there was no mention of the best boys, gaffers, key grips, and caterers. I noted the omission as a good lesson in leadership. Remember to give credit everywhere that credit is due.

(This is a personal call out to Jason, Dave, and Jill for their work as best boy, gaffer, and key grip. Give credit where credit is due.)

On the Humility Imperative site, an Abraham Lincoln quote caught my attention.

The best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time.

I love a great list and the quote’s accompanying post by Angel Cirrone Smith got me thinking about life and how I should position myself in this quickly changing world. A couple of favorites:

Appreciate & respect differences in others. This is what makes us all unique.
Not every person you meet is going to like you.
Live each day by trying to put a smile on at least one person’s face.

Angel’s list is simple and insightful. A good lesson in humility.

I recommend the Humility Imperative site. I also took the oath. It drove me to change my Quiet Leader Commandments after two years.

Thanks for reading. Lead with humility. Take the humility oath. Make the world a better place.
Don

Gratitude is Powerful and Contagious

2011-09-11T08:19:00.001-05:00

Gratitude is a powerful attitude.

I have written about gratitude many times. You can review summaries of three Lead Quietly gratitude posts below.

“Show Gratitude” is also Quiet Leader Commandment #7. It is an important leadership tenet.

But it takes discipline. When the stress of our situation causes us to work with our heads down and a focus on our mission, it is easy to forget. As is often quoted: "We are so often caught up in our destination that we forget to appreciate the journey, especially the goodness of the people we meet on the way." - Source Unknown

This past week, two of my colleagues, Jason and Keith, provided me with two lessons and a reminder about the power of gratitude. I don’t have to share details other then that their dialogue reminded me of the power of gratitude, and,

You double or triple the impact if you go out of your way to deliver the message.
It is hard to receive thanks without passing it back. It’s contagious.

Here is a quick summary of some of my previous writing on the topic as a further reminder of the power of gratitude.

Building Community: Thank you as a way of leading

from the Lead Quietly Archives

Gratitude is an easy and remarkably powerful step in building the type of community that is essential for successful teams. As I have written before, "Building community is hard. However, it is easy to start quietly and simply with thanks and smiles.

First, I'd invite everyone to read the wonderful work of Rosa Say. I have employed Rosa's insight several times in the past including, 12 Rules for Leadership and It's All About Learning.
This week, her Managing with Aloha Coaching blog introduced me to the concept of "mahalo" which means thankful living. The most striking suggestion for a quiet leader is,

Say “thank you” often; speak of your appreciation and it will soften the tone of your voice, giving it richness, humility and fullness.

Transformational Gratitude

from the Lead Quietly Archives

Gratitude is transformational. Russell Bishop writes this past week on the Huffington Post that gratitude is a key to personal transformation. I'd like to share two of Bishop's thoughts and encourage you to read the full post.
Bishop writes, "given the stressful times in which we live and the apparent instability, unreliability, and fear wracked nature of our social and economic systems, it seems to me that the counterintuitive notion of Gratitude is needed right here, right now, for each and every one of us."
He goes on to write beautifully about the transformational force of gratitude.

Gratitude is a kind of seed that survives even the most devastating of circumstances, one that can germinate with the slightest amount of care. And when the gratitude seed germinates, the grateful typically experience an expansion of well being - emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
The seed typically sprouts in small ways, and yet the observant amongst us will notice that the tiniest sprout slowly grows into something more substantial. Gratitude is not just a seed, but also a form of nourishment that enables us to find our way out of difficult circumstances, to find choices that others might miss, and to craft an improved life experience.

This is a powerful sentiment for a simple concept.

Practice Gratitude - Increase Happiness, It's Official

from the Lead Quietly Archives

The research data is in. Gratitude builds community and increases happiness.
I have written in earlier posts that a simple thank you does much to build community. In Build Community - Start simply with smiles and thanks, I quoted Carmine Coyote who wrote at Slow Leadership, that gratitude is "major constituent in the glue that holds together groups of all sizes, from a few friends to society as a whole."

Leaders can use thanks and gratitude to start building a community of leaders.
The value and effect of gratitude was cemented in "Practicing Gratitude Can Increase Happiness by 25%" on the PsyBlog. The post cites the work of Dr. Robert A Emmons of the University of California, Davis in his book, Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier. In studies referenced in the book, Emmons found that people who focused on gratitude felt fully 25% happier and more optimistic about the future.

Additional research by Emmons and Dr Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami discovered that the benefits of gratitude extended to a variety of emotional, interpersonal and life gains.

Thanks to my colleagues for the lesson and reminder.

Thanks for reading. Lead quietly and don’t forget gratitude.

don

My Tribute to Trey Pennington - Be-Attitudes for a New Millennium

2011-09-04T17:49:00.001-05:00

Today, I was saddened by the news of the passing of Trey Pennington. I am reaching back into my archives in tribute to his life and great contribution. Please read below.

Today, his suicide death reminds us that depression can take on many forms and impacts, even in someone with a great public persona. An estimated 19 million Americans suffer from major depression. It is an illness that must be treated and treated seriously.

Today, I was touched by a number of tributes to Trey. The bravest was perhaps the words of Bridget Pilloud who wrote today, The Difference between Trey Pennington and Me. Please read it for insight into depression.

My Tribute to Trey Pennington. RIP......

Originally Posted April 11, 2010:
I love a concise list that can provide insight, a call to action, or a quick reminder. I have noted this before in For the love of learning, you gotta love a good list. My Quiet Leader Commandments is one of my contributions.
In a similar vein, fellow AOC3 collaborator, Trey Pennington provides a great list of guiding principles for leaders. He titled his list, Be-Attitudes for a New Millenium. I discovered this great list as part of my AOC3 Learn Quest , my personal mission to learn from each of the contributors to the book Age of Conversation 3 that will be available soon.
Here are Trey's Be-Attitudes:

The Be-Attitudes for a New Millenium
Be alert: You may either be self-centered or alert.
Be quiet: When you’re quiet, you can listen.
Be available: yep, this is a 24/7 world and banker’s hours went away as an acceptable measure of availability a long time ago.
Be visible: it means having a sufficient presence wherever “your people” might be hanging out they know you’re there when they need you.
Be responsive: If your people” ask you a question, give them an answer.
Be generous: the days of protecting your turf are long gone.
Be helpful: Help people solve their problems; good things will happen.
Be quiet: quietness is linked to humility is linked to greatness.

Please read the full descriptons at treypennington.com. The post's comments are also enlightening.

In summary, I appreciate the entire list but especially like the extra attention given to the call to "Be Quiet."
Trey links quietness to humility and reminds us of the great and sustainable accomplishment of those who changed the word quietly in contrast to the loud ones who have left us with messes. (think about our current economic state)
Additionally Trey posits, "When you’re quiet, you can listen." Listening is a key element of building community, learning, balance and building vision.
I'm honored for the opportunity to collaborate with Trey Pennington and others. My AOC3 Learn Quest challenge is my mission to explore the work of every co-collaborator of the Age of Conversation 3. I am humbled to be a part of this great group of writers and thinkers. They offer so much to learn and explore. You can follow my progress on my AOC3 Dashboard. The book will be available soon. Proceeds to benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation
Enjoy, keep meshing up and lead quietly.
Don
#AOC3

Posted via web from Meshing Up

Meekness is not Weakness

2011-08-27T07:22:00.001-05:00

Meekness is a strength, in leadership, in teamwork, in life. Is is part of your leadership skills portfolio?

At first, this was a difficult association for me because the concept of meek doesn’t have positive connotations. If someone is described to be “meek as a mouse” or “meek as a lamb”, it is hard to imagine how that same individual could be a strong leader.

If you also have difficulty with the association, Bret L. Simmons wrote a “must read” post on his blog. Here are a couple of highlights from Simmons:

The meek leader first absorbs as much of the power directed at him or her as possible, dissipates whatever will not benefit the group, and then responds with purposeful foresight.
Meek leaders are systems thinkers.
Strong meekness, like wisdom, is rare and remarkable. Strong meekness is very prudent.

After you read and explore the Simmons work and as you decide whether meekness is part of your leadership skills portfolio, consider the Merriam Webster Thesaurus definition of meekness. They define meekness as

the absence of any feelings of being better than others

That definition sealed the deal for me. As Simmons says, “meekness is not weakness.”

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and meekly.

don

Collaboration Is a Team Sport - Three simple ideas for a collaborative foundation

2011-06-11T08:59:00.002-05:00

The advantages of collaboration on innovation and success is clear. Correspondingly, a challenge of any workplace is to foster collaboration.

A recent series on the Harvard Business Review (HBR) blog reminded me that many of our simple, Lead-Quietly ideas help make collaboration happen.

In Embedding Collaboration from the Start, HBR senior editor, Jimmy Gutterman reminds us that collaboration needs to be cultivated. He writes,

Of course we all need to collaborate more and better. Yet it's also one of those functions that many companies hope will just happen. Let's put a bunch of good, motivated people together and the collaboration will take place, right? It's not that easy — leaders must create conditions in which collaboration is inevitable.

I'm sure that many of us can cite examples of groups that were thrown together and couldn't find the path to collaboration. So what can leaders do to create a collaborative environment?

In a followup post on the HBR blog entitled, Collaboration Is a Team Sport, and You Need to Warm Up, author Adam Richardson, answers the leader question by employing some themes that have frequently been explored here on Lead Quietly. Those themes are community, trust, and communication.

He writes,

Sustainable collaboration is best when the people know and trust each other. Ideally they have met in person, know a bit about each other personally as well as professionally, have a sense of communication and work styles, and what the individual strengths, weaknesses and points of view are.

Leaders should ask themselves if they are creating opportunities "to consciously and actively help people get to know each other in these ways as much as possible before they are put together on projects."

Here are three simple Lead Quietly ideas for building a collaborative environment.

Know your team. It starts with knowing about your team and their lives, including spouses, children, and passions. As Linda Hill and Kent Lineback state in their book, Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader

If you don’t know your people, you cannot make intelligent decisions about assignments for them, and you cannot capture their commitment or decide how much to trust and delegate to them.

Build Trust. Work on trust every day. Remember that trust begets trust, and that building trust is easy. Follow the simple tips I cited in Building Trust Every Day - It's Important, It's Easy

Show Gratitude. Gratitude in the form of a simple thank you may be the simplest and most powerful community building tool available. I wrote in Building Community: Thank you, as a way of leading, "Look at your team members or coworkers directly in the eye and say thank you. I believe you'll instantly realize the power of gratitude."

The HBR articles remind me that good collaboration starts with a foundation based on good community. I believe that good community starts with three simple tips:

Know your team
Build Trust
Show Gratitude

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
don

How do you know that it is working? You Monitor and Adjust.

2011-04-17T11:47:00.001-05:00

Good teachers are always asking, “How do I know that it is working?” Isn’t that also an essential question for leaders?”

I have used the last few posts at Lead Quietly to draw links between the critical behaviors of a teacher to the critical behaviors of a good leader.

Here is the complete list of the critical teacher behaviors and the same behaviors applied to leadership:

Five Critical Behaviors of a Teacher	Five Critical Behaviors of a Leader
Teach to an objective	Lead to an objective. Have clarity in your mission.
SELECT an objective at the appropriate level of difficulty.	Put people in a position and role where they can succeed.Pursue clarity in roles.
MAINTAIN the focus of the learner on the learning.	MAINTAIN the focus on the follower.
USE without abuse the Principles of Learning (Active Participation, Motivation, Closure, Reinforcement)	USE without abuse the Principles of leadership (Active Participation, Motivation, Engagement, Trust)
MONITOR and adjust.	MONITOR and adjust.

Monitor and Adjust

An effective teacher will include a check for understanding as part of every lesson. Of course, a common check for understanding is a test. However all of us recognize that our favorite teachers were the ones who offered different approaches and creativity to different learning situations. These were likely teachers who were always monitoring, adjusting, continually tweaking their approach.

Just writing about this takes me back in time to my junior high science class where we could count on the same daily lecture, that amounted to nothing more than a recitation of the textbook without comment, feedback, dialog, and certainly no check for understanding. As delivered by this less than competent teacher, teaching was comprised of only lectures and tests. Don’t you think that seeing half of class asleep be cause for some adjustment????

Contrast this experience to these frequently cited words used by Dr. Madeline Hunter in her work, Enhancing Teaching:

A creative teacher is one who has first acquired the necessary skills to practice the science of instruction and who continues to refine and supplement those skills in such a way as to capitalize on his/her own personal strengths, those unique qualities of the learners, and the individual features of the teaching/learning environment in which students and teachers find themselves.

Monitor and Adjust in Leadership

Shouldn’t a good leader always be asking, “How do I know it is working?” Shouldn’t a good leader always be adjusting their approach to match the situation.

Let’s take the sentiment of the Enhancing Teaching quotation from above and give it a Lead Quietly bias:

An effective leader is one who constantly hones the necessary skills to practice the art of leadership and who continues to refine and supplement those skills in such a way as to capitalize on his/her own personal strengths, the unique qualities of others, and the individual features of the community and the situation in which the individuals find themselves.

When you review the changes that I made to the quotation, it highlights the following elements of leadership that have been cited previously on Lead Quietly:

Leaders should be constantly learning about leadership in order to adjust and grow. Remember, it’s all about learning.

There is no single best leadership style. What works best is going to vary because the strengths of the leaders and the qualities of others. A good leader can adapt as needed.

Leadership is about community and the skills of the community and the context of the situation are key variables. Different situations and communities call for different approaches.

Any leader who does not monitor and adjust will simply not be effective in the complexity of today’s environment.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and don’t forget to monitor and adjust.

don

Lead Like a Good Teacher - Be Principled

2011-04-02T15:22:00.001-05:00

Good leadership is similar to good teaching. You can also say that good teaching is really good leadership.

I have used the last few posts at Lead Quietly to draw links between the critical behaviors of a teacher to critical behaviors of a good leader.

Here is the complete list of the critical teacher behaviors and the same behaviors applied to leadership:

Five Critical Behaviors of a Teacher	Five Critical Behaviors of a Leader
Teach to an objective	Lead to an objective. Have clarity in your misison.
SELECT an objective at the appropriate level of difficulty.	Put people in a position and role where they can succeed.Pursue clarity in roles.
MAINTAIN the focus of the learner on the learning.	MAINTAIN the focus on the follower.
USE without abuse the Principles of Learning (Active Participation, Motivation, Closure, Reinforcement)	USE without abuse the Principles of leadership (Active Participation, Motivation, Engagement, Trust)
MONITOR and adjust.	MONITOR and adjust.

Guiding Principles

In this post, I focus on the the fourth critical behavior of teachers and leaders, where success in either area requires use of core guiding principles.

I am a fan of guiding principles. In my day job in information management and business intelligence, the domain's guiding principles drive good practice and propose an appropriate course of action for most design and application decisions.

Principles of Learning

Madeline Hunter's Instructional Theory into Practice model for teaching mastery proposes four key principles of learning that should be used. The principles focus on active participation, motivation, closure and reinforcement. An exploration of these four principles are beyond the scope of this article. However, I would like to discussion reinforcement and describe a teacher trick that I frequently use when presenting to my team or other group.

Most of us understand the basic principles of reinforcement from our studies in psychology where we learned about B.F. Skinner and positive and negative reinforcement. We generally understand that positive reinforcement increases the probably of response while negative reinforcement will tend to supress response.

Now imagine that you are presenting to a group and you pose a question to the group. For the purpose of this discussion you pose the question, "What is two plus two?" The first response that you get is "five." Five is flat out a wrong answer. And if you as the presenter say, "Wrong", you may never get another response from that audience member. Negative reinforcement will suppress response. It's not possible for you to say "Good answer!" So how do you neutralize the wrong-answer response that you need to give?

The teacher trick is to convert every response to a right answer. So when the audience member responds with the wrong answer "five," you can convert that into a right answer by saying, "Thank you. If I had asked 'What is two plus three?' the answer would be five. However, I had asked 'What is two plus two?' so "four" is the answer."

In this simple response, you converted the wrong answer into a right answer for a new question and made better use of the principles of learning.

Use but do not Abuse the Principles of Leadership

For nearly four years, I have written at Lead Quietly, about topics that I consider to be the essential principles of leadership. Readers of this blog understand my passion for principles like learning, collaboration, engagement, communication, community, balance, vision, and trust. I do not intend to reintroduce these principles in this post.

However, I thought I would reuse a visual concept that I first used back in a 2008 post, Lead Quietly, Can you state that in 25 words or less? where I used Wordle to present a visualization of Quiet Leadership. Here is my new visualization about the principles of Quiet Leadership that you should use but not abuse so that you can lead like a teacher.

My hope is that the visualization presents a reminder about leadership principles that should be used but not abused.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly with principles.

don

Lead Like a Teacher - Focus on the Follower

2011-03-26T15:29:00.000-05:00

In my previous three posts, I linked the skills of leaders and teachers by comparing the five critical behaviors of ateacher to associated leadership skills. I'm a former teacher and I find myself using my teacher skills and behaviors every day. I have deep regard for the skills of a good teacher and this series of posts is my proposal that thoseteacher skills are also essential leadership skills.

Here is the complete list of the critical teacher behaviors and the same behaviors applied to leadership:

Five Critical Behaviors of a Teacher	Five Critical Behaviors of a Leader
Teach to an objective	Lead to an objective. Have clarity in your misison.
SELECT an objective at the appropriate level of difficulty.	Put people in a position and role where they can succeed.Pursue clarity in roles.
MAINTAIN the focus of the learner on the learning.	MAINTAIN the focus on the follower.
USE without abuse the Principles of Learning (Active Participation, Motivation, Closure, Reinforcement)	USE without abuse the Principles of leadership (Active Participation, Motivation, Engagement, Trust)
MONITOR and adjust.	MONITOR and adjust.

In this post, I focus on the the third critical behavior of teachers and leaders, maintain the focus on the learner or follower.

In teaching, the activities of the teacher need to focus on the learner. It's another simple concept. Teaching is not a brain dump or continuous lecture of information. Learning requires active participation of the learner.

Constructionist theories of learning propose that the teacher is a facilitator who crafts a learning experience that allows the learner to construct their own understanding of the content. The activities of a good teacher should center around learning (learner-focused) and not about teaching (teacher-focused). Teaching is not a performance. It's about learning.

The activities of a good leader should also focus on the follower and not the leader. A good leader is not about command and control. It is about facilitating, coordinating, collaborating, trusting and influencing. It's a big job and it's difficult.

Here are some snippets of previous Lead Quiety posts that focus on this concept.

From Leading from Below:

Focus on influence, not control.
Enlist people around you to work on a common cause. Try to get people to act on their own. Adopt the perspective of the people around you. Don't hoard information. Share it. Keep things simple and clear and win the devotion of the people around you. Think influence not control.

From Hiding your Leadership come one of my favorite leadership quotations, quote from Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu,

As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. … When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!

From my Quiet Leader Hall of Fame series, featuring Dwight Eisenhower, we learned that Eisenhower was always team focused:

Eisenhower never used the word "I". It was always "we," except one time when he wrote out the message that would be handed to the press in the event the landings failed. And there he used the personal vertical pronoun, it's my fault, I did it. Otherwise it was always "we".

From Be a good leader. Be incomplete. Don't be perfect, don't even try. I quote Peter Senge and others who wrote in the Harvard Business Review:

... the sooner leaders stop trying to be all things to all people, the better off their organizations will be. In today’s world, the executive’s job is no longer to command and control but to cultivate and coordinate the actions of others at all levels of the organization. Only when leaders come to see themselves as incomplete—as having both strengths and weaknesses—will they be able to make up for their missing skills by relying on others.

In summary, isn't leadership really more about followership? A good leader should focus focus on the follower andlead like a teacher.

Thanks for reading and please lead quietly.

don

Lead like a Teacher - Find the Right Role

2011-03-05T08:21:00.002-06:00

In previous posts, I drew parallels between leadership and teaching. I have deep regard for the skills of a good teacher and good leaders seem to naturally apply their critcal skills.

Here are the five critical behaviors of a teacher and the same behaviors applied to leadership as originally cited in Great Leaders Should Behave Like a Teacher

Five Critical Behaviors of a Teacher	Five Critical Behaviors of a Leader
Teach to an objective	Lead to an objective. Have clarity in your misison.
SELECT an objective at the appropriate level of difficulty.	Put people in a position and role where they can succeed.Pursue clarity in roles.
MAINTAIN the focus of the learner on the learning.	MAINTAIN the focus on the follower.
USE without abuse the Principles of Learning (Active Participation, Motivation, Closure, Reinforcement)	USE without abuse the Principles of leadership (Active Participation, Motivation, Engagement, Trust)
MONITOR and adjust.	MONITOR and adjust.

In this post, I focus on the the second critical behavior of teachers and leaders.

The concept for a teacher is simple. A good teacher teaches at the appropriate level of difficulty. A third grader who is just learning his/her multiplication facts isn't ready to receive a lesson on quantum physics. Of course, a good teach constantly monitors and adjusts (this is another key behavior that I want to explore later) in order to get to the right level of difficulty.

As a leader/manager, I try to use a parallel concept with two tenents:

Put people in a position and role where they can succeed.
Pursue clarity in roles.

The Tom Kelly Approach

I refer to the challenge of putting people in a role where they can succeed as the "Tom Kelly Approach." For years, I have attributed my discovery of this concept to Tom Kelly, the former manager of the Minnesota Twins. Hence I think of it as the Tom Kelly Approach even when many of my colleagues don't recognize or remember who Tom Kelly is.

This concept came to me during Kelly's weekly radio show in his response to a call-in listener who was insisting that Kelly should be starting the backup catcher who was hitting over .300 at the time. Kelly responded to the caller by proposing that this was a bad idea. In his own direct language, he declared that one of his roles as the manager of the team was to put his players in a role where they can succeed. In this case, he clearly stated his opinion that the backup catcher would fail in a role as the every day starter.

It is one of those conversations that lit a bulb for me and stayed with me, well after most people have forgotten who Tom Kelly is. Like a teacher needs to teach to the right level of difficulty, as a leader/manager I try to put people in roles where they can succeed.

The second tenent of this concept refers to the need to communicate so that people are clear in their roles. This is a concept that I discovered while teaching for the University of Phoenix while pursuing information that would help student groups. I have written about this before in Manifest Team 1: Characteristics of High Performance Teams where I discussed the need for clarity in writing:

Clear roles: Team members need to understand their roles and assignments. And it's better when the understanding includes the big picture, task interdependence, and how one members work affects other members.

Just like a great teacher who is able to provide the perfect lesson at the right level of difficulty for a learner, a great leader/manager needs to be able to place a team member in a perfect and clear role to be successful. It is just another example of parallel critical behaviors between teachers and leaders.

In my own quiet fashion, I continue to show respect for the skills of a good teacher. My series also includes:

Great Leaders Should Behave Like a Teacher

Great Leaders Act Like a Teacher - Lead to an Objective

Great Leaders Act Like a Teacher - Master the Art of Skillful Questioning

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and like a teacher.

don

Great Leaders Act Like a Teacher - Master the Art of Skillful Questioning

2011-02-28T04:37:00.004-06:00

In my previous posts, I drew parallels between leadership and teaching. I have deep regard for the skills of a good teacher and good leaders seem to naturally integrate teacher skills into leadership.

This past week, my plan to discuss the five critical behaviors of a teacher take a small detour, the results of an interesting and related post by Mike Myatt on the N2Growth blog. In Overcoming Hero Leader Syndrome Myatt proposes that hero leaders who need to swoop in to save the day, are not doing well for their employees or organizations. He proposes,

Great leaders don’t subscribe to a “Do-It-For-You” methodology of talent management, rather they lead, mentor, coach, and develop team members by getting them to buy-into a “Do-It-Yourself” work ethic.

Myatt stress that great leaders are always teaching, always coaching, always mentoring.

A key tool for the leader in this teacher role is the art of questioning. Myatt offers five tips to enhance your skills in questioning:

Be sincere in your questioning.
Learn to ask effective questions.
Use questions to stimulate and challenge.
Get personal in your questioning.
Demonstrate your competency without giving the answer away.

I recommend the Michael Myatt blog post to learn tips on the use of questions in leadership. These tips remind me of the lead-by-questions approach proposed by Minnesota author Gary Cohen in his book Just Ask Leadership: Why Great Managers Always Ask the Right Questions. I first wrote about Gary's book in Just Ask Leadership - Do You Look Good from Below.

The final paragraph of the Myatt post was a great reminder about the role of teaching in great leadership.

If you want to become a great leader, master the art of teaching and coaching through the application of skillful questioning.

The quote clearly defines the type of link between leadership and teaching that I have discussed in recent posts, Great Leaders Should Behave Like a Teacher and Great Leaders Act Like a Teacher - Lead to an Objective.

Thanks for reading. Lead quietly and act like a teacher with skillful questions.

don

Great Leaders Act Like a Teacher - Lead to an Objective

2011-02-19T08:31:00.003-06:00

In my previous post, I drew parallels between leadership and teaching. I have deep regard for the skills of a good teacher and good leaders seem to naturally apply their skills. Here are the five critical behaviors of a teacher and the same behaviors applied to leadership:

Five Critical Behaviors of a Teacher	Five Critical Behaviors of a Leader
Teach to an objective	Lead to an objective. Have clarity in your misison.
SELECT an objective at the appropriate level of difficulty.	Put people in a position and role where they can succeed.Pursue clarity in roles.
MAINTAIN the focus of the learner on the learning.	MAINTAIN the focus on the follower.
USE without abuse the Principles of Learning (Active Participation, Motivation, Closure, Reinforcement)	USE without abuse the Principles of leadership (Active Participation, Motivation, Engagement, Trust)
MONITOR and adjust.	MONITOR and adjust.

In this post, I focus on the the first critical behavior of teachers and leaders who act like a teacher and employ the objective as a leadership tool.

When a teacher teaches to an objective, it calls on the teacher to not only formulate an objective before instruction begins, but to also declare the objective as an element of each lesson. There is a planning element to the objective but it is also important to communicate the objective not only at the beginning of the lesson but also to restate the objective at the end of the lesson.

In my own role as a teacher, this eventually became a natural element of my instructional approach. Interestingly, as I watch training lessons in the business world, it is common to see a trainer dive into the content of a lesson without the statement of objective. Most "amateur" trainers are more concerned about the content and forget the packaging, i.e. the statement of objectives at the beginning and end of a lesson.

In "Act like a teacher" fashion, it also falls naturally that leaders should lead to an objective. The primary purpose of this post is to explore of the "objective" as a leadership tool. I have chosen to explore the use of objectives in three areas:

The objective as a planning tool.
Using objectives as a meeting agenda.
Using objectives to organize communication.

The Objective as a Planning Tool

Just as the objective is part of a teacher's lesson plan, the statement of objectives is a useful and influential part of the planning process. The process can start as simply as asking the question, "What are we trying to accomplish?"

In the business world is is very common to find conversations about problems that start with solutions. It is kind of like doing software development without requirements. It is easy to begin "solutioning" before the objectives are actually stated. As a leader, you can influence the conversation by simply stating, "Let identify what we are trying to accomplish here." This leads to your list of objectives.

For teachers, learning objectives describe "what students should know or be able to do at the end of the course." (MIT Teaching & Learning Labratory) and are distinguishable because the begin with an action verb like demonstraction, report, compare, etc.

For the the purpose of business planning, I feel that your objectives, stated as little more than a bulleted list of what you are trying to accomplish, is often adequate. A simple bulleted list might be DUMB (doable, understandable, manageable & beneficial) but still can add direction to the conversation. Many objective-setting experts propose that you improve your objectives by making them SMART, i.e. Simple, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. In a quiet leader manner, I propose that any objective used in planning and that answers the question, "What are we trying to accomplish?" is a significant and leaderly step.

Using Objectives as a Meeting Agenda.

In business, we participate in hundreds of meetings every year. Unfortunately, many meetings start and end with no statement of purpose or agenda. People leave those meetings frustrated and wondering why the meeting was needed.

It is very simple to state the objectives in the meeting the meeting invitation and restate the objectives at the beggining of the meeting. In prefer a statment of objectives over an agenda. Whereas, an agenda would provide a sequence of topics, a list of objectives can do the same while also providing purpose and direction to the meeting.

The meeting experts at the Effective Meeting site offer Six Tips for More Effective Meetings where they state the importance of meeting objectives in tip number two, immediately behind their first tip where they propose that the best meeting sometimes is no meeting. In talking about meeting objectives they state,

One benefit of setting objectives for the meeting is to help you plan the meeting. The more concrete your meeting objectives, the more focused your agenda will be.

You can lead with objectives by using objectives as a meeting agenda.

Using Objectives to Organize Communication

A few years ago when I was teaching a college critical thinking class for IT students, it was common for these new students to submit papers that were unorganized and meandering. The writers would often jump directly into the content discussion with no statement of purpose or hint about their plan. My primary message to those students is essentially my recommendation in this post. Leaders can use objectives to organize and more effectively package written or verbal communication. A simple declaration of your objectives or purpose in either a written paper, memo or presentation goes a long ways to organizing the communication and giving it a purpose.

I could not have stated this any better than white paper specialist Jim Lodico in his post, Ten Days to a Better White Paper – Day 1: Define Your Objectives where he writes

One of the most important yet most overlooked steps in creating a white paper is to clearly define the goals and objectives of the project. ... The paper may provide valuable information and truly solve an industry problem but without a clearly defined objective at the outset, the white paper doesn’t work.

The same message can be made about presentations. A statement of objectives adds direction and purpose to your presentations. It also gives the presentation a teacher-like quality. This idea is validated by presentation specialist and author, Andrew V. Abela at his The Extreme Presentation(tm) Method blog. Speaking of presentation objectives he writes,

Your objectives should not be about what you—the presenter—intend to do in your presentation. Those are not objectives; they’re an agenda. Your objectives should be about how your audience will change as a result of your presentation: how will they think and act differently after they leave the room.

You can avoid unorganized and meadering communication by adding a statement of objectives to your written communications and presentations.

The primary purpose of this post is to explore the "objective" as a leadership tool. Just like a teacher, quiet leaders will benefit by leading to an objective in planning, meetings, and communications.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly with objectives.

don

Great Leaders Should Behave Like a Teacher

2011-02-06T09:28:00.001-06:00

There are some obvious common elements at the intersection of leadership and teaching. Perhaps the most obvious is that good teachers are leaders.

However, the intersection took a different direction last week after reading an article on brain health on the Lifehacker site. The post, Top 10 Tips and Tricks to Train, Exercise, and Better Your Brain describes ten activities that can exercise your mental muscles. Sodoku, math exercises and writing are good examples.

The tip that took me in a different direction was the post's suggestion to "Act Like You're Teaching." The post encourages us to exercise our brain by pretending "as though you're teaching yourself how to do" something.

This tip caused me to consider the intersection of teaching and leadership. I'm a proud, former teacher who values the skills of a good teacher. During my days as a teacher I was part of an instructional skills development program that introduced me to the work and teaching techniques developed by Madeline C. Hunter. Her work and research demonstrated that effective teachers have a methodology and exhibit key critical behaviors when planning and presenting a lesson.

Although Hunter is best know for her Instructional Theory into Practice teaching model, part of her work also included the Five Critical Behaviors of a Teacher. To this day, I can recite those five behaviors as:

Teach to an objective.
Select the right level of difficulty.
Focus on the learner and the learning.
USE without abuse the Principles of Learning
Monitor and Adjust

I have always thought that those same behaviors of a teacher can be applied to leadership. There are teacher behaviors from this list that I use every day. However, until now, I had never lined them up directly as I have done below where I associate each critical teacher behavior with a related leadership behavior:

Five Critical Behaviors of a Teacher	Five Critical Behaviors of a Leader
Teach to an objective	Lead to an objective. Have clarity in your misison.
SELECT an objective at the appropriate level of difficulty.	Put people in a position and role where they can succeed. Pursue clarity in roles.
MAINTAIN the focus of the learner on the learning.	MAINTAIN the focus on the follower.
USE without abuse the Principles of Learning (Active Participation, Motivation, Closure, Reinforcement)	USE without abuse the Principles of leadership (Active Participation, Motivation, Engagement, Trust)
MONITOR and adjust.	MONITOR and adjust.

The five behaviors can very nicely align with corresponding behaviors that we expect from leaders.

In the next few posts on Lead Quietly, I intend to explore the intersection of teaching and leadership through this aligned set of behaviors.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and act like a teacher.

Don

Quiet Leaders Prove Better Leaders

2010-12-28T05:51:00.000-06:00

There is new research about the effectiveness of introvert leaders that validates many of the concepts I discuss here.

As I have written before, I'm an introvert and contrary to the belief of some, being an introvert isn't crippling. It is more about energy and how you gather and use it. As an introvert, I gain energy with solitude and expend energy with people.

I have proposed in previous posts that quiet leadership is effective. For example in The Best Leaders Are..., I cited the work of Executive coach Jennifer B Kahnweiler who wrote on Forbes.com about the strengths of the introvert leader. She proposed key characteristics that make an introvert a better leader:

They think first, talk later.
They focus on depth.
They exude calm.
They let their fingers do the talking.
They embrace solitude.

This topic and related research was explored recently on the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge blog. The post, Introverts: The Best Leaders for Proactive Employees reviews the work of Business School professor Francesca Gino. Professor Gino's research will be published next year but the early results indicate that:

Extraverted leaders can be a liability if the followers are extroverts, tending not to be receptive to employees who make suggestions and take initiative.
Introverted leaders are more likely to listen to, process, and implement the ideas of an eager team.
Leaders need to adapt their style depending on the type of group they are leading. With proactive employees, leaders need to be receptive to the team's ideas; with a more passive team leaders need to act more demonstratively and set a clear direction.

The notion that leaders need to adapt their style is the biggest takeaway in the post for me. I'm looking forward to reading about the research when it is released later this year.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.

don

Building Trust Every Day - It's Important, It's Easy

2010-11-06T07:41:00.003-05:00

Trust is an essential element of leadership.

To me, there is a solid link as validated in some of my previous explorations where I cited the work of James M.Kouzes and Barry Z.Posner from The Leadership Challenge and discussed the absence of trust as note as one of five team dysfunction in my review of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable.

This post expands my reflection on trust from a couple of recent discoveries on the blogosphere. First, exploring the importance of trust in collaboration and work performance, and secondly, to offer easy quiet leader-like tips for trust building. You can work on trust every day.

The Importance of Trust

Bret L. Simmons in a post "Why We Trust" at the Leader Lab site, cites two compelling studies that link the role of trust to collaboration and general task and job performance. Two quotes from Bret's post summarize the study's findings:

Trust increased an individual’s task performance, risk taking behavior, citizenship behavior (doing more to help others at work), and decreased counterproductive behavior.

If teamwork is important in your organization, then ....you should select and promote individuals with a high propensity to trust.

The Simmons post validates my previous thinking on the importance of trust. Good information from the LeaderLab. You can get more from Bret Simmons at his Positive Organizational Behavior site, both great leadership resources.

Building Trust

The importance of trust is clear. Now how do you build trust? Are there quiet leader-like approaches for building trust?

I discovered a very nice trust building tip list from the Thinking for a Change blog of Pascal Van Cauwenberghe. In the post, he summarizes a 2007 presentation from David Anderson titled, Building a high trust culture in your software engineering organisation.

In the post, Pascal suggests, "Do you want to work better, faster and get more satisfaction out of it? Increase the trust level in your team."

He offers a quiet leader-like list of tips for building trust, an actionable list that reminds me that you can work to build trust every single day.

Here is Pascal/David's tip list:

Trust begets trust
Be humble and respect the other
Vulnerability disarms
Apologize for poor results; take responsibility, even if you weren’t involved in the delivery of the poor results; promise better; deliver.
Keep delivering, regularly, predictably.
Deliver daily on your personal commitments; deliver daily or weekly on team commitments
Demonstrate competence; rehearse and practice for perfect delivery
Be transparent
Encourage learning from failure
Get rid of command & control
Build up a reputation
Define clear values and principles; let them guide decision making

I like this list. There is something on this list that you can work on every single day. The result of this daily attention will be the expansion of trust and the increase in job performance.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and build trust every day.

Don

The Learning Zone - Everyday Action for Learning

2010-10-31T17:30:00.000-05:00

Learning is key to leadership. It's a simple idea. However, we also know that learning is complex with many styles, approaches, and theories. It is easy to propose that learning is essential but how does one simplify the concept into everyday action.

Everyday action about learning recently came to me as I read Monday Morning Leadership: 8 Mentoring Sessions You Can't Afford to Miss by author David Cottrell. Monday Morning Leadership (MML) is a short book of practical advice that is set as a story where a manager named Jeff becomes a student of leadership through weekly discussions and coaching with his mentor. Tony, the mentor, takes his student down a journey of sage and practical advice for leaders and managers.

Tony's advice throughout the story is solid and accessible. His advice is consistent with the insights offered here on Lead Quietly. However, no section of MML reasonated more than Cottrell's exploration of "the Learning Zone."

As leaders, it is easy to become stale. Cottrell cautions leaders to avoid becoming complacent within your comfort zone, a space that he proposes is a "forceful enemy to your potential." He proposes that you avoid complacency by entering the "Learning Zone."

Cottrell's Learning Zone is comprised of three rooms, the Reading Room, the Listening Room, and the Giving Room. These three rooms present an approach for everday action from the Learning Zone.

The Reading Room

Your everyday action that brings you to the reading room is simple. Read every day. When you commit 10 minutes per day, you will learn from over a dozen books every year. I'd propose that books are important but that a regular scan of the leading leadership and management blogs will also serve you well. My action plan is simple, set aside time everyday for reading.

The Listening Room

Listening is key to learning, leadership, and collaboration. Listening is inexplicably linked to learning, conversation and sharing which as noted by learning expert Jay Cross, become the "stem cells for learning." Your everyday action? Take time to listen and learn. Listen intently to every conversation.

The Giving Room

Give back by teaching and helping others succeed. By teaching others, you become more accountable for the approaches that you are teaching. Aristotle wrote, "Teaching is the highest form of understanding." Your everyday action from the Giving room? Take the time to give back by teaching other.

I like simple learning actions. Learn by reading, listening, and giving. With these daily actions, we don't need to think that learning has to be complex.

Thanks for reading. And don't forget to read, listen and give.

don

Influence, An Introvert's Perspective

2010-10-14T19:49:00.004-05:00

I am an introvert and unfortunately, live in a world that tends to like heroes. But I treat it as a challenge. I feel that I can lead and influence without the power, charisma, or advantage that extroverts commonly seem to possess.

In the book Age of Conversation 3: It’s Time to Get Busy, book contributor Don Frederiksen, (I heard of that guy) provides six recommendations for introverts who want to quietly influence without leaving their introvert zone. The essential message; leverage your introversion. Use your natural tools to talk less but communicate and influence more.

Be friendly. Say hi and bye. Don’t forget to smile. People will say yes to people they like.
You are an expert in silence. Use it. A pause in your words adds powerful punctuation.
Look people deeply in the eye. People will nod in agreement.
Communicate on paper. Think of the times you go to meetings lacking an agenda? Influence the discussion by outlining your thoughts and distribute the paper as a discussion aid. And because you bring paper, volunteer to record and summarize. As Tom Peters says, whoever “writes the summary…wields great power.
Follow-up fastidiously. Simply put, do what you say.
Show gratitude, say thank you. Go a little out of your way with this simple message.

Influence doesn’t have to be loud. Influence can emerge from someone who is not the life of the party. Introverts can leverage their introversion to wield more influence. As Jonathon Rauch wrote in Caring for your Introvert, “If we introverts ran the world, it would no doubt be a calmer, saner, more peaceful sort of place.”

Age of Conversation 3: It’s Time to Get Busy is a crowdsourced, collaborative effort of 171 contributing authors on topics such as influence, social medea, innovation and more. Proceeds of the book benefit the mission of charity:water, a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.

charity:water is also a participating partner in Blog Action Day. Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action.

I encourage you to purchase Age of Conversation 3: It’s Time to Get Busy. Your purchase today will bring improvement to you and the greater good.

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